Mind Games

by Cecilia Tan

She tried Abby’s number again, and again got the message about the number being taken out of service temporarily. Then she dialed Derek’s number, but got his voicemail. Disappointment flooded through her. “Derek, it’s Wren. I’m taking the rest of the day off, so anytime you want to meet, I’m free. I’m out doing errands. Call me back.”

  Errands didn’t seem like such a bad idea, anyway. She had been meaning to drop by the store and get a new toilet paper holder for weeks now, ever since accidentally breaking the previous one. Like a lot of things in the condo, it had looked nice but was actually cheap. Since then she’d just been putting the roll on the back of the toilet and didn’t really care. Who ever saw the bathroom off her bedroom but her?

  But as she stood in the bathroom fixtures aisle looking at a dozen different styles of rollers, she had to admit to herself that she kind of hoped that maybe someone, someday, besides her, might see the bedroom.

  Her phone ringing startled her. “White or brass?” she said, the moment she opened it.

  Thank God, it was Derek and not Steve. “Excuse me?”

  “No questions, just pick one.”

  “Um, brass.”

  “Okay.” She took the brass fixture under her arm and started walking toward the cash registers, the phone crooked on her shoulder. “How are you?”

  She thought she could hear him smiling through the phone. “Pretty good. I got your message. Will you be home in a while?”

  “Yeah.” Wren set her things down on the counter and the cashier rang up the purchase without ever making eye contact with her. “Want to come by for take-out? I’m thinking Chinese. Or maybe sushi. There’s a place that delivers that now, too.”

  “Chinese is fine. Around six? Or... sooner? We could talk first.”

  “Sooner,” she found herself saying. “In fact, I haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “Why don’t you come by my office then? You can park in the lot here and there’s a new sushi place next door we could try.”

  “That sounds really good.” She took a deep breath, wondering if it was her imagination, or if he really sounded as eager to see her as she thought. It was all supposedly about Abby, about the case, but it sounded—it felt—like flirting. No, not even flirting, like real interest.

  Derek Chapman, she thought, I’m falling in like with you.

  With a start she realized the cashier was now glaring at her. She swiped her credit card quickly through the reader, signed on the pad, and hurried out. The phone started ringing again as she approached her car—Steve’s number showed on the screen. She shoved the phone in her pocket. Maybe he’d leave a message.

  THEY SAT AT A TABLE in one corner. The lunch rush was over and the restaurant was quiet except for the radio the sushi chef was playing and his occasional attempts to sing along with it.

  One of the things about sushi, Wren found, is that everything came in orders of two, which made it very hard not to contemplate sharing things. Especially when Derek would eat something, get a rapturous look on his face, and then ask if she wanted to eat his other piece of whatever it was. “I'll trade it for a piece of your spicy tuna roll,” he’d say.

  One of the pieces he gave her was suspiciously white. “Is it real? It’s whiter than tofu,” she said, eyeing the little slice of fish on its oblong ball of rice.

  “They call it white tuna,” he said. “Apparently it’s not really tuna, it’s some other fish, but it’s an actual fish. You haven’t tried it before?”

  She shook her head but picked it up, dipped the barest corner of it into her soy sauce, and popped it into her mouth.

  The fish seemed to melt as she chewed it, better than any actual tuna she could remember tasting. She made a happy sound, then took a sip of salty miso soup to follow it. “That was good. Want a piece of my eel?” It was one of the things she saw he hadn’t gotten. He made a slight face. “Oh, come on. I didn’t try it for years because I thought eels were... weird. But they’re just a long, skinny fish. And they make it really soft when they cook it.”

  “I always turned my nose up at the cooked part,” he said, "but I'll try it.”

  She smiled as his face took on that blissful look again. “Told you it was good.” She was enjoying herself and his company so much she almost forgot that he had something to tell her about Abby. I had an interesting night last night, he had written. What did that mean?

  Wren supposed if it were urgent, though, he would have called her to tell her right away, or at the very least told her as soon as they sat down. Soon enough they were eating their dessert, though, balls of ice cream wrapped in a kind of cookie dough made from rice, and sipping their last refills of the green tea that tasted like roasted rice.

  “So... I told you I’m working on this other missing persons case, right?” he said, leaning back with the teacup in his hand and glancing out the window. “The case has taken me to some pretty outlandish places. One of them is a kind of nightclub, a private club, and I was there last night. And the thing is... I thought I saw Abby there.”

  Wren waited for him to go on. He looked out the window again, and his cheeks had a slight blush to them.

  “I couldn’t get near enough to talk to her, and she disappeared into a section of the club where single men aren’t allowed to go. I asked one of the other women who worked there, though, and she said she wasn’t sure who I meant, didn’t know her name, but I got the impression that the woman I saw who looked like Abby worked there.” And then he gave a little shrug.

  “So, you could go back tonight and ask around for her again?” Wren asked.

  “Well, they are only open three nights a week, and Sundays are the only nights they let new people come in. Um, private club,” he repeated. Now he was blushing full on.

  Wren set her teacup down. “What do you mean private club? Like... a strip club? It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Abby became a stripper, you know.”

  He got a little smile then, but still didn’t meet her eyes. “Not a strip club,” he said. “It’s a... kind of couples club. That’s why as a single man I couldn’t go beyond the lounge.”

  “Couples club?” As she said it though, his blushing came to make sense. “I suppose they aren’t getting together to play bridge, is that what you’re saying?”

  He nodded gratefully. “I plan to go back next week, with... with a female friend who's also a private investigator. She... she specializes in cheating husbands so she’s been there before. They really really don’t like people asking questions. The whole thing is kind of not wholly legal. Well, I mean the sex is. There’s no law against couples having sex with each other at a... a party if they want to. But as a business, they don’t have regular employee records, for example. And of course their member list is highly secret...”

  He ground to a halt and gave her a concerned look. “It'll be all right, Wren.”

  Wren realized she was frowning at him. “You and this friend, it’s strictly business?”

  She was gratified to see the stricken look that fell over him now. “Strictly! Very.” It took him a moment to gather his wits and a full sentence. “Diana and I share that office. We've worked together a lot. She’s not only married, she’s fifteen years older than me. If... if it'd make you feel better, you could meet her.”

  Wren wrapped her hands around the teacup, a pang of guilt going through her for making him defend himself. It wasn’t as if she really had any right to be jealous, did she? But then, he reacted as if she did.

  She wanted to say the words. Derek, do you like me? But she held her tongue. That was so... junior high school. And it was obvious he liked her, wasn’t it?

  “Okay,” she said instead. Then she remembered. “Are we still on for dinner, too?”

  “If you like,” he said softly, his voice a little tentative. “I’d like that.”

  Oh, Jesus, now he’s feeling insecure because I scolded him.

  It was kind of cute.

  “You’re not backing out, are you?” she teased.

&n
bsp; “No! Just... checking.” And then he insisted on paying for lunch, saying she could cover dinner if they still wanted to keep things even.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER she’d followed him all the way to his car at eleven that night to say goodbye to him that she realized she just didn’t want him to go. She wanted him to kiss her goodnight, but that would have been way too obviously wrong, too much beyond the plausible state of friendship they had now. It was okay to be friendly and still have a business relationship, apparently, but kisses good night were right out. She stood in the driveway watching him back out, and he waved from the street as he put his car in gear and then drove off.

  Strangely, she didn’t have any memorable dreams that night at all, though she slept very well. While eating some cereal in the morning she began to wonder if she should get a cat. The condo seemed very empty and quiet after the hours and hours she and Derek had spent talking the night before.

  She’d dragged out her old photo albums, ostensibly to show him all the pictures of Abby, so maybe he’d recognize her better next time, but she ended up showing him all of them, even all her baby pictures and childhood photos of trips to the beach, amusement parks, and Christmas at various relatives' houses.

  Wren sighed. And now she wasn’t going to see him again until when? It was a whole week until he could look for Abby again.

  She tried to put it out of her mind. She would see him when she’d see him, and maybe in the meantime she could email him some jokes or something.

  The flowers had slipped her mind completely, until she got to her desk and there was the latest one. This one was a sprig of mountain laurel, each spray of tiny, white bell-shaped blossoms hanging like a tassel. The scent was lovely.

  Pretending that Derek had sent it, Wren decided she’d just ignore Steve if he called. He hadn’t left a message. She sent Derek a recycled joke in email in the mid-afternoon, but hadn’t heard back from him by four thirty when she left work. It didn’t even look as if Steve had tried to call this time, which was a relief. At home, she did 45 minutes on the treadmill, installed the new toilet paper roller, and ended up thoroughly cleaning the bathroom including taking everything out of the medicine cabinet, cleaning all the shelves in it, and throwing away at least a third of the stuff in there because it was old or expired. She didn’t even realize how late it was getting until her stomach grumbled. She ate a bowl of microwaved macaroni and cheese and then got in bed with a book.

  Before she’d read five pages, she was asleep.

  Of course there were dreams, but the dream didn’t turn lucid, didn’t turn erotic, until later. When it did, Wren found herself in the basement room that was starting to seem familiar. She could see the painted cinderblock, the pattern muted by multiple layers of paint.

  “Put your hands over your head.”

  The voice came just in her ear and she jumped. She was standing with her hands bound in front of her. She raised them, exposing her breasts, and her breath caught. Someone off to the side tugged at the bindings and she found herself affixed to the wall. Hung like a picture frame. A bright light shone down on her from the ceiling, making her blink. Beyond the bright cone she could see nothing in the darkness.

  Then a hand reached into the light, twirling the spray of mountain laurel in its fingers. His fingers, she thought. It was definitely a man's hand.

  “Lovely,” said the voice from the darkness, as the hand painted air across her stomach with the flowers, using the tassel-like chains of the blossoms as a brush. Then again, and again, swinging the flowers gently in a crisscross, until the skin all over her stomach and breasts tingled from this strange scourging. Her nipples stood up eagerly, as if trying to catch the brush on each pass.

  “Spread your feet apart.”

  She did as she was told, her arms above her pulled taut, though she wondered, what would happen if she said no? She was lucid, quite clear that she was dreaming, and she wondered if she could exert her will, her desire, on this dreamscape.

  Cool air on hot flesh, and then the cool brush of the flowers, upward and upward and upward, until she was panting and crying, wanting more, needing more, inflamed and aroused and yet she would never reach climax this way.

  “Please,” she said, forming her lips around the word, forcing the sound out, as if fighting against the dream. “Please, I need...” Dream logic said that if her dream partner made her come, she wouldn’t have to do it herself when she woke.

  And please let it be Derek there in the dark, she thought. Why did her mind have to wrap everything up in symbols and metaphors? Why couldn’t she just have a nice, normal fantasy about the attractive man she knew?

  She tried to imagine him stepping into the light, nude, looking like a Greek statue, his cock in a nest of curls as dark as the hair on his head. He’d wrap his arms around her, rubbing his crotch against her leg until he was so hot and hard he needed to quench the fire in the wet depths of her.

  “Derek...” she whispered, and her heart stuttered as the motion of the flower ceased. She blinked as the hand was withdrawn into the darkness. Was he about to step into the light as she imagined?

  No, no it was too early for the dream to be over, wasn’t it? The light seemed to be muting but she suddenly realized she was lying on her back, staring up at the white ceiling above the bed. A sunbeam had just strayed past her pillow—it must have been shining on her eyelids and that was where the bright light in the dream came from. Of course the flower came from today's "secret admirer" on her mind. Though how it was used... she’d certainly never done or even thought of anything like that before.

  She groaned and insinuated a finger between her slick folds.

  BY THURSDAY SHE WAS restless and irritable. She had even snapped at Steve on the phone the one time she’d answered it and felt guilty immediately after hanging up. The poor guy was probably never going to have the guts to talk to another woman again. The flowers stopped appearing on her desk, though they continued to appear in her dreams.

  She ended up calling Steve back to apologize and learned something that made her worry that maybe encouraging him wasn’t such a good idea.

  “I have an apology to make, too,” he’d said. “Er, you might not remember it now, but you got a random call from a stranger claiming to be calling a personal ad?”

  “Of course I remember that,” she said, irked anew.

  “Yeah, well, um, that was me. My first attempt at trying to talk to you. It was so stupid! I’m so sorry. You've been so nice to me.”

  And she felt even more guilty because she wasn’t being nice at all. She hung up on him again.

  Meanwhile, Derek and she had kept up a steady stream of little emails to each other, two or three a day, of jokes, funny pictures of cats, and amusing news stories. When she saw one from him on Thursday afternoon, she opened it expecting nothing of consequence. But along with the cartoon he’d sent was a note saying, "Diana has a conflict. Can we talk about the plan for the weekend?”

  She couldn’t help but be amused. To anyone else who might read her email it might appear she had a boyfriend and this was just about making social plans with friends. Instead she called him from her car on her way home.

  “Diana's got a family emergency,” he told her, while she was stopped at a red light. “She has to fly home; her mother's in the hospital.”

  “Oh,” Wren said.

  “I had an idea though. Can I come over to tell you?”

  She took her foot off the brake as the light changed. “Um, sure.”

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  Was she hesitant to see him? It was just hard having to maintain a distance. “Just distracted. I’m driving.”

  He made a scolding noise. “I'll be there in a little while, okay?”

  She stuffed the phone back into her purse and looked around guiltily. Okay, so she shouldn’t be trying to talk on the phone and drive. It just went to show how nuts she was for him.

  He pulled up about twenty minutes later. She’d
chit-chatted with Lawrence a bit and had just changed her clothes when he rang the bell.

  “Have you had dinner yet?” she asked, the moment he was in the door.

  “Er, no, but I didn’t intend...”

  She waved her hand until he trailed off. “It’s okay. I don’t mind making a habit of this. I was just going to boil some pasta. I can do it as easily for two as one.” And she was really tired of eating alone.

  “All right.” He gave in easily and she wondered if maybe he was tired of eating alone, too.

  She started filling a pot with water, and he dug some vegetables out of the crisper for salad. They worked without speaking for a little while, and she started sautéing some garlic and mushrooms in a saucepan, then added the jar sauce she liked.

  “Did Diana say what’s wrong with her mother?” she asked when the noodles had gone into the water.

  Derek set the salad on the table. “She didn’t know. Possibly a stroke. They weren’t sure at the time when she collapsed, and Diana went off to the airport before I heard anything more. I guess she’s been having health problems for a while, so this wasn’t totally unexpected but...” He shrugged. “I’m not sure if she doesn’t want to talk about it, or if it’s that she’s uncomfortable talking about it with me in particular.”

  Wren nodded and resisted the urge to stir the pasta. “So is the trip to the club on Sunday off completely then?”

  “Assuming she doesn’t get back in time, which seems likely... well...” He leaned against one of the stools without completely sitting on it. “I did have one other idea.”

  Wren waited for him to go on. She knew that was where she was supposed to say "what?” but she never liked feeling like a dog who barks when it’s trained to. If he was going to tell her anyway, why should she have to prod him?

  He met her eyes, though, and didn’t speak for a few seconds. Then, "You could come with me. In fact, I had wanted to ask you to do it in the first place, since you’d be the most likely to recognize your sister anyway. But I didn’t want to put you in a... an embarrassing position. Or make you do anything you wouldn’t be comfortable doing.”